Democrats are once again hoping that Texas will turn blue in the upcoming midterms. To accomplish this, though, their Senate candidate, James Talarico, is seeking to pivot away from previous left-wing comments he made during the Peak Woke year of 2020.
Talarico, who has played up his Christian faith on the assumption that it will somehow convince voters repulsed by his actual overriding liberal belief system, previously remarked in 2021 that “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary.” Talarico, who is currently a Texas state representative, made the comments in opposition to banning male-to-female transgender athletes from women’s sports. He also claimed that there are six biological sexes rather than two, using uncommon chromosomal variations to bolster his irrelevant argument in favor of gender fluidity.
Now realizing that his past comments may prove to be a liability in the general election, Talarico has attempted to walk back the remarks. He referred to his statements as “cringey” in passing, claiming that Republicans were focusing on them as a distraction from their own record. Notably, he didn’t say that he had changed his mind, merely claiming that he “[…] was being intentionally provocative with that statement” when referencing his professed belief in a non-binary deity.
In an interview with CBS, Talarico also assured voters, “I know there are two sexes, men and women,” while repeating his past comment that a certain number of people have chromosomal abnormalities. On its face, this might appear to make him a right-wing outlier in his own party, until you remember that Democrats draw a distinction between sex and gender. It’s a simple biological fact that there are only two sexes, but the media has not pressed Talarico on how many genders he believes exist, where they would no doubt receive a more creative answer.
Notably, Talarico did not comment on a past racial tweet he made during the George Floyd era, where he solemnly stated that “White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus. But we spread it wherever we go.” This pseudo-profound statement on the supposedly omnipresent virus of racism may have been in tune with the 2020 Black Lives Matter zeitgeist, but is less likely to fly with voters these days.
A recent Texas poll shows Talarico leading Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and Republican nominee for Senate, 47% for 44%. Democrats would no doubt be overjoyed if they succeeded in their long-elusive quest to flip one of Texas’s Senate seats. As November approaches, though, it’s more likely that the race tightens and Talarico’s fortunes slip away, with voters seeing through his “cringey” attempts to remix leftism for a Christian audience.
